But his development was precocious.
His zeal for learning and the excessive ardor with which he devoted himself to physical exercises undermined his constitution.

He became an invalid and died childless, after exhibiting to his court for many years an example of patience in sickness and of dignified cheerfulness under the restraints of enforced inaction.

His wife, Elizabetta Gonzaga, one of the most famous women of her age, was no less a pattern of noble conduct and serene contentment.
Such were the two last princes of the Montefeltro dynasty.[2] It is necessary to bear their virtues in mind while dwelling on the characteristics of Italian despotism in the fifteenth century.

The Duchy of Urbino, both as an established dynasty not founded upon violence, and also as a center of really humane culture, formed, it is true, an exception to the rule of Italian tyrannies: yet, if we omitted this state from our calculation, confining our attention to the extravagant iniquities of the Borgia family, or to the eccentricities of the Visconti, or to the dark crimes of the court of Naples, we should gain a false notion of the many-sided character of Italy, in which at that time vices and virtues were so strangely blended.

We must never forget that the same society which produced a Filippo Maria Visconti, a Galeazzo Maria Sforza, a Sigismondo Malatesta, a Ferdinand of Aragon, gave birth also to a Lorenzo de' Medici and a Federigo da Montefeltro.